


seems wrong to pretend

by endofadream



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bottom Bucky Barnes, Brief Mentions Of Rape, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky is like really bad at communicating, Communication Failure, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Top Steve Rogers, a tiny hint at sub Bucky, brief face-slapping, poor Steve doesn't know, poor kink negotiation, pretend that civil war didn't happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-13
Updated: 2016-09-13
Packaged: 2018-08-14 21:40:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8029801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: Steve studies Bucky, then asks, “What do you want?”It’s a simple question. Four words. There is no right or wrong answer, but Bucky does not know how to answer it.





	seems wrong to pretend

**Author's Note:**

> i was originally going to have this tie into my other sub bucky fic, [monday morning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7506352), and be sort of a precursor for their dynamic in that particular 'verse, but somehow this, like most of my work, took on a mind of its own. there are brief mentions of sexual abuse, as mentioned in the tags, but it's nothing explicit. title from "in florida" by a day to remember.
> 
> translated into russian [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4786862)

Sundays are for not much in particular. Bucky wakes up slow, with the light half-filtering into the room through the slats of the blinds. Steve’s arm is thrown over him, his breathing a soft whuffling noise against the pillow. Bucky gives himself a moment to orient, cataloguing the things in the room: the quiet rotation of the fan; the sheets that cover him from the waist down; the tangle of Steve’s legs in his; the red glow of the alarm clock on the bedside table and the gentle ruffle of the pages of the open science-fiction novel next to it. Bucky isn't always lucid when he wakes up, so Sam suggested making a mental checklist of things to look for. It’s proven to be a lot more helpful than Bucky had thought it would.

Steve wakes up even slower, long past the light shifting its placement on the floor. His arm tightens around Bucky for a moment, then he groans, rubs his face against the pillow. Says, muffled and sleep-rough, “G’morning.”

Bucky smiles, reaching up to run his hand through Steve’s hair. He loves Sundays for this reason. It means that the day can stretch lazy and slow, like taffy, aimless in its direction with no rush to do anything other than bathe in the hedonistic quality of a day off.

“Good morning yourself,” he says, quiet, and feels his heart leap when Steve gives him a sleepy smile and half-awake kiss.

They have a late breakfast together, kisses over bacon sizzling on the stove, Bucky laughing a rare, full-bellied laugh as Steve tries to flip a pancake only to have it fall on the floor. They're in their t-shirts and underwear, relaxed and at-ease. Golden sunlight warms their kitchen and the bright blue of Steve’s eyes warms Bucky from head to toe. Steaming mug in his left hand and his right on Steve’s waist, Bucky kisses the syrupy sweetness off Steve’s lips, marveling at how _easy_ everything is now. Even though his mind still glitches, even though he walks through the twenty-first century in ways that he shouldn’t be able to, things are easier.

The kisses turn noisy, sloppy. They grab at each other, too desperate for the crawling drag of a Sunday morning. This is something they’ve been taking slow: fooling around here and there, friction and suckjobs and handjobs, figuring out a safeword if things get too overwhelming for Bucky.

Sex with Steve is something that Bucky’s missed dearly, though every time he tries to say it he finds himself choked up, frustratingly mute in the wake of the want brimming in his chest. It smothers everything that he wants to say.

Steve finally pulls away when his hand finds Bucky’s ass and Bucky gasps his name into Steve’s mouth. He looks debauched, blond hair raked in all directions from Bucky’s fingers. And still he is devastatingly handsome, the way he’s always been, even when no one but Bucky bothered to try and see it.

The countertop is cool against the small of Bucky’s back where his shirt has rucked up. He’s breathing hard, skin hot and beginning to feel too tight. His heart is racing, but it’s pleasant. He considers dropping to his knees, right here in the kitchen. He’d done that once, he thinks, back in their old apartment in Brooklyn. Surprised the hell out of Steve, too, had him coming in Bucky’s mouth and on his chin in a little over a minute.

Steve studies Bucky, then asks, “What do you want?”

It’s a simple question. Four words. There is no right or wrong answer, but Bucky does not know _how_ to answer it.

He is still getting used to asking for what he wants. Words sometimes don't come easy, tripping and cluttering on his tongue. He feels guilt for feeling pleasure and feels pleasure when he denies himself. He does not understand why people expect him to adjust to human life so quickly; Sam gets it, most days, because he’s seen the brunt of it through the VA, so he doesn’t force the issue.

But Steve sometimes will get that look of consternation, that furrow between his brows that means he’s thinking too hard. That thin set of his mouth and a dark flash in his eyes that means he’s raring for a fight. He never says anything, but he doesn't need to.

Bucky knows that he’s broken, frayed and ragged at the edges with missing pieces. Won’t ever be the same again, no matter what. You don’t exactly come back swinging from being split in two with one half forced to become a weapon.

His therapist tells him that want is a basic human function. Basic human functions are okay—good even—in the long run. They are what makes him human, after all. And he is: he breathes and eats and thinks for himself again. Most days. But back then, HYDRA hadn’t wanted that. And if HYDRA didn't want it, you didn't get it.

So instead he says, “Let’s go to bed,” and strides out of the kitchen. His mug, still steaming, rests in a pool of sunlight on the counter. Steve stands there, blinking, until Bucky looks over his shoulder, offering his most licentious smile, and says, “Coming?”

Steve, though. Oh, how Steve makes him _want_. Makes him feel on fire with it. He realizes, now, how goddamn greedy he’d been before all this, back when he and Steve were sneaking around, shamefaced in the dead of night using mouths and hands and muffling their groans into each other’s palms. Exploring a side of themselves thought to be a crime, unnatural, even though the way that Steve looked in the wan light, all skinny angles and pale, pale skin, head tossed back and wrist pressed to his teeth to muffle his groan of Bucky’s name as he shot off over Bucky’s fist and his own concave belly, felt so right. So goddamn right that Bucky knew, without a doubt, that it was where he was supposed to be.

He had seen the addicts in their neighborhood, driven mad with drink and women; looking back, he thinks that’s how he had been with Steve. Stumbling around Depression-ravaged Brooklyn with rose-colored glasses on and the scent of Steve permanent in his nostrils. Crazed and love-drunk though he hadn’t known it yet.

Now he knows. Knows that the glow in his chest, stoked from embers to roaring flames just from Steve’s touch, is love. That all it takes is Steve blowing on the tinder of his heart to set him aflame.

Bucky lets Steve back him against the bed. Stops when the backs of his knees hit, hands on the broad of Steve’s shoulders. Eyeing each other, breathing hard, Bucky smirking and Steve finally breaking and pushing him back onto the mattress.

Steve’s lips are smooth and warm and Bucky chases them, lifting up off the bed when Steve goes to pull back, and it’s a back-and-forth like they’re teenagers again, smiling and giggling, both trying to outdo the other. Hooking his fingers on the hinge of Steve’s jaw gets him a muffled laugh; sliding his tongue along the seam of Steve’s mouth gets him a moan and those lips parting to greet it with his own tongue.

The mattress tilts to Bucky’s left as Steve supports his weight there and uses his other hand to run up the back of Bucky’s thigh, feeling the shiver and tremor of powerful muscle in the wake of his broad palm.

“What do you want, baby?” Steve asks again, pulling back to nip at Bucky’s lip. He slides his hands now down Bucky’s sides, dipping under the curve of his back and smoothing over his hips. His fingertips dip into the waistband of Bucky’s underwear, tugging the band away slightly before letting it snap back. The brief sting of pain grounds Bucky, snapping him out of his slack-jawed stupor.

“You, Steve,” Bucky gasps, and it drips with need. He wants skin-on-skin, the warm press of Steve’s chest against his. Wants the thick weight of Steve’s cock. “God, fuck, _please,_ babydoll,” he says, voice honeying, “I’ll do anything.”

“Anything?” teases Steve. He’s breathless, eyes so wide and pupils so dilated.

It has been so long since this, so long since Bucky’s had Steve between his legs, hard in his shorts. He has had dreams of this, back in Bucharest, before and after he remembered that Steve was more than just Captain America. He wants in a way that makes him feel dizzy. It scares him, almost: Steve is the one person who can unravel the tentative weave of his control. Steve could undo him with just a few touches, a few words, and Bucky _loves_ it.

A shudder runs through him. He lifts his head up. “I want you,” he says, giving voice to long-dormant needs, speaking up the way that his therapist wants him to. He maintains eye contact as he slides his flesh hand down Steve’s bare chest, feeling the contraction of hard muscle under his touch, to finally cup the hard-hot bulge of him.

The fabric is sticky, damp, where the head of Steve’s cock strains. Steve shivers, eyes going heavy-lidded, and pushes into Bucky’s touch. Bucky’s tongue pushes against the backs of his teeth, then out to dart along his lips. Steve follows the movement with the greedy eyes of a predator.

“I want you,” Bucky says, a little surer, stroking over the length of Steve’s cock before dipping his hand inside to tug Steve out, securing the waistband behind Steve’s balls. He strokes, firm, and Steve moans out Bucky’s name, thick and low. Bucky does it again, thumbs over the head and eases down the foreskin, smearing the pearl of pre-come down the blood-hot shaft. Emboldened by his display of power, by the twitching weight of Steve in his hand, he allows himself to want. He wants it in him.

“I want you to fuck me,” he says, and just the words send a thrill down his spine, pooling low in his gut and making his own cock twitch in his underwear. “Please.”

“You sure?” Steve’s voice is hoarse. He’s barely controlling himself, animal urge about to win over. Like a horse chomping at the bit, quivering to stretch its muscles. “You know you don't have to do anything you’re not ready for, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I know what I want,” he says, rubbing over the sensitive spot under the head to see Steve’s hips jerk, feel the twitch of his cock in his hand. “I’ll be okay, Stevie.”

“You know your—”

One side of his mouth curves up into a lopsided smile. “Yeah, sugar, I know my safeword.”

Steve swears and swoops down, cupping Bucky’s jaw in his hand as he kisses him, hard and possessive, sharp teeth and smooth tongue. Bucky moans and rolls his hips up, desperate for contact. Against his lips Steve murmurs, “Shh, sweetheart, gimme a second,” and he’s tugging his own underwear off, then Bucky’s.

Steve braces his weight on his forearms, eyes locked to Bucky’s as he lowers himself down, slots his cock alongside Bucky’s. They both moan, and Steve drops his head to the curve of Bucky’s neck, and Bucky _wants_.

“C’mon, Stevie,” he whispers. “Give it to me. Give it to me good, pussycat.”

He tries to conjure up a little of the Bucky Barnes from before the war, the man with the infallible swagger and the easy, confident smile. The knowledge that, with a little sweet-talking, he could get whoever he wanted in his bed.

And it works, at least a little. Steve barks out a muffled laugh and leans up to kiss Bucky, pulling back to say, “Always hated that nickname,” though the smile still on his lips and the jerk of his cock against Bucky’s belies his words. Steve’s always been a sucker for the pet names and sweet talk, and Bucky has a wealth of them and a penchant for flirting his way out of trouble.

“My little pussycat,” Bucky teases. He cups the nape of Steve’s neck, runs his hand down Steve’s shoulder. The skin there is smooth, the muscle underneath strong and corded. So different from the thin, sinewy muscle Bucky’s used to feeling there. “Always yowlin’ and spittin’ for no good reason at all.”

“Yeah, well,” says Steve, and stops there. He props himself up on one arm. He looks like he wants to say something, lips parting a few times, but finally he shakes his head and asks, “You got the slick?”

“I got lube, and I got Vaseline,” Bucky says, winking. Mostly he does it to hear Steve’s laugh, let it warm him all over. Partly he does it because he likes the sense memories of it, the greasy slick on their fingers, their scratchy sheets, their creaky little bed. A time locked away in a snow globe.

They end up using the Vaseline, the little jar balanced against Steve’s knee, Bucky’s legs spread wide with his heels digging into the sheets. The slick catches the light of the room, gleams on Steve’s fingers.

Unbidden, Bucky lets out a whine, head tipping back, his arms shuddering where they hold him up on his elbows. His legs open a fraction of an inch wider. Inviting. Beckoning Steve to fall between them, helpless the way they’ve always been helpless around each other, drawn into each other’s gravity like moons.

_Love,_ Bucky’s ma said long ago, _is a force more powerful than nature. You are born with love. It withstands disasters. It withstands time. It withstands everything until it’s the last thing left._

And he and Steve…Bucky thinks it’s safe to say that they’ve withstood more than time.

Steve breathes, low and deep. His pupils have begun to eat away at his irises, growing blacker as he runs his clean hand up the soft inside of Bucky’s thigh and wraps it around his knee. “Jesus,” he says, and it’s his art voice, his church voice, all soft reverence and awe at beauty. It makes Bucky shiver. Makes tears burn at his eyes. He hasn't been anything beautiful in a long time. Hasn’t been anyone’s beautiful even longer.

When he looks at himself in the mirror he sees jagged edges and patchwork skin. Sees the eyes of the hunter become the hunted. Steve, when he looks at Bucky in the mirror, says it doesn’t matter. It doesn't matter because history is history and he’s here now.

“Put them in me, Steve,” says Bucky. He reaches down, grabs Steve’s wrist. Directs it between his legs and feels the jolt of anticipation run through him, like electricity. He thinks he’s trembling. Maybe they’re both trembling, mountains beginning to judder at the start of an earthquake.

It’s quick and efficient. Steve slides one long finger in, then two, Bucky tossing his head back and keening all the while, gripping the sheets. He needs three, needs Steve’s cock. Needs to remember what it’s like to be tethered to this man.

When Steve slides in, hand still on Bucky’s knee holding him wide, it’s like opening the door to the apartment after a long vacation. The deep breath of _home_ , of familiarity. Steve looks down at him, a vision in all his wide-eyed glory. Looking at Bucky like he’s the best goddamn thing in the world. It hurts, but only until Steve’s seated, balls-deep, and begins to move, slow. The drag and stretch and burn. The greasy slickness of the Vaseline. How Bucky’s body remembers Steve better than it remembers itself.

“Steve,” he breathes, and it hitches. A tremor runs through both of them. All teasing leaves his voice, replaced with pure raw need. “Move. Please.”

Steve does.

It is good. It is so good. He had forgotten what this kind of good feels like—the kind that is like sunshine, warming your skin down to your bones. The kind that makes you forget yourself and your inhibitions. The kind you seek out, grasping desperately for just a little bit more. More, _more._ The stretch of Steve’s cock inside him, its heavy weight as it slides in and out. The firm swell of Steve’s tits under his palms and the hard little pebbles of his nipples under his thumbs, making Steve gasp and breathe out Bucky’s name when he plays with them.

Bucky moans, and it’s almost strange to his ears, how wanton he sounds, the keening lilt at the end, but it makes Steve moan in turn, nose pressed against Bucky’s neck. Bucky loves when he can make Steve sound like that. His big body brackets Bucky like a blanket. His arms, bulging and huge, on either side of Bucky’s head.

“God, you sound so hot,” Steve’s saying, and his hips snap forward, hard, hard. Their skin wet and damp with sweat and lube as it claps together and reverberates inside Bucky’s body like thunder. Bucky knows that he’ll be feeling Steve for days, and the thought makes him moan again, hand on the back of Steve’s head; the other, the metal one, is clenched in the sheets, pulling handfuls towards the curve of his thigh where it’s lifted up around Steve’s waist. He still does not trust himself with its strength when he lets himself go. Most of the time he doesn’t trust himself at all.

“Steve.” It’s threadbare, reedy, and he tips his head back, inviting Steve’s mouth on the vulnerable column of his throat, guiding Steve’s head there with a shaking hand. The warm-wet suction of lips and tongue has Bucky digging his heels against the small of Steve’s back, punched-out gasping, “Oh, _god_ —”

Steve loves him like he fights: with everything in him. Fierce. Reckless but still, somehow, tactical and careful. Bucky loves Steve the best he can, with hesitating touches and more steps backward than forward, but Steve tells him over and over again that anything is a step forward. Bucky has a hard time believing that. He has a hard time believing a lot these days.

“You like that?” breathes Steve, and Bucky almost laughs, pulling Steve up to kiss him sloppy instead. Does he like it? _Yes_. He doesn't answer, but Steve knows. _Yes I like it. Give me more. Give me everything. Your heart and soul and you, every inch of you._

His cock drags along Steve’s belly, smearing sticky wetness along the ridges of Steve’s abs. It is maddening and yet not enough. He clenches and Steve’s breath shudders, choked low in his throat, biceps flexing when he jerks forward in surprise. Bucky grips at Steve’s lats, biting his lip through a smile, then slides his hand down Steve’s trim waist to the firm swell of his ass.

“You’re so goddamn beautiful, Buck,” Steve says, worrying a mark into Bucky’s neck that will fade too soon. “Like a goddamn portrait.” Steve shifts, spreading his knees, drawing up to fold Bucky a little further in on himself. The change in angle has every brush of Steve’s cock pressing just right; Bucky’s grunts quickly become red-faced desperate mewls, hand clawing at Steve’s broad shoulders.

Steve looks down and _god_ he is beautiful with his blond hair flopping down over his forehead and his grin wide and unashamed. Like when they were kids, before the world leant its full weight upon them. “Right there, sweetheart?” he asks sweetly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Bucky finally sobs out, knee-jerk reaction. He is quivering, cock twitching and leaking on his belly, and he wants to touch it so bad, he wants to come so _bad_. Steve starts fucking into him harder, relentless and savage in the insistent drive of his cock, and Bucky rakes his nails hard down Steve’s back, red lines that will begin to fade before either of their orgasms. Soaks in the shudder under his hand and cries out, head tossed back. Lets himself succumb to the piston of Steve’s hips and moans, words spilling out fast and endless, “Feels so good, Stevie, oh _fuck,_ don't stop, please, don’t _stop_.”

“I got you, Buck.” Steve’s voice is strained; he’s close, and Bucky wants to feel Steve come in him, wants to feel the rush of hot slick warmth and know that he is Steve’s. He does not deserve this but selfishly he wants it. He wants this good feeling, this sunshine feeling, wants the fire in his belly and the twisting coil of arousal lingering heat in his loins. He wants the blind lust and the instinctive, feral need to reach it. He wants to cry out Steve’s name when he comes and he wants to be _good._

“You’re so good,” Steve is gasping. “You feel so good.” With his forehead pressed to Bucky’s the words are hot and intimate and Bucky blinks back tears and curves his hand around Steve’s cheek instead. They don’t kiss, just breathe, nose-to-nose, and Bucky greedily soaks in Steve’s words, spreading his legs wider, inviting Steve in deeper.

But soon—too soon why why _why_ —the good becomes too much becomes unbearable, and he needs to reign it back in before it swallows him whole. He has forgotten this kind of intensity and it’s overwhelming, lights blinding and colors deafening and everything like it’s been turned up to eleven.

Steve is still fucking in steady thrusts that make Bucky’s voice come out high and pinched, and he does not deserve to feel this good. He does not deserve the man above him, does not deserve the pleasure singing through every crevice of his body. Above him, Steve looks rapturous. Above him, Steve’s mouth falls open, just slightly, and Bucky’s name is a quiet, revered groan. He does not deserve this. He deserves pain.

_He likes it. Just look at him. He’s drooling. You could probably shove the stun baton in him instead and turn it up to max and he’d still beg for more._

The memory resurfaces so intensely he jerks. The smell of a damp sub-basement. Stale sweat and sex and fear and cordite and, beneath it, the iron rust smell of blood. He squeezes his eyes shut. Steve’s cock nudges his prostate but it doesn’t bring pleasure. He has not been told that he could feel pleasure yet.

_Look at him take it. Like a goddamn champ, ain’t even complaining. You know what? Grab the stun baton anyway, Rumlow’s always liked that. And if he starts screaming shove your dick in his mouth. He knows better than to bite now._

His fingers grab for purchase on the sheets. He can’t stop the little gusts of noise that each thrust wrings from his throat, and it is wrong wrong _wrong_. What had been good about it before? He needs to be quiet. There are only a few agents that like him making noise. He closes his eyes. Bites his lip. Steve is trying to inflict pleasure, but it has never been about his pleasure. Only others. He comes only because they want him to and only when they want him to, and it’s usually as a humiliation tactic.

Steve fucks in, sharp, the way that Bucky used to love in a time when sex was fun, and he can’t stop his gasp. Can’t hold back the quiet sound that escapes somewhere in the space of a breath, morphing into a strained, “Hurt me.”

The room falls silent. Quiet enough it’s like he could hear the building creak and settle.

Steve slows, then stops altogether, backing off so that Bucky isn't folded-up beneath him. With his eyes still closed Bucky does not know what is going on, so he opens them. Steve’s expression is unreadable but after a lifetime of knowing him Bucky can see that Steve is concerned but trusting enough of Bucky to not say anything. Bucky appreciates that.

Steve says, “Buck,” and it’s soft. Too gentle.

Bucky shakes his head. His body shakes, too, and the warm-good of before starts to feel suffocating. It sits heavily in his belly. He hurts. He hurts so bad it’s like he can feel it crawling under his skin. Like if he’d look down he could see it, see the paths of the hurt work their way up and down his flesh arm in twisting, red-tinged vines.

“Please,” he says, desperate, and he fixes Steve with what he hopes is a pleading look. “Hit me. Steve. Please. I need it.”

Steve looks pained. “Bucky—”

“ _Please._ ”

Steve hesitates. Bucky does not blame him; it’s a heavy request, one he had never made before. But there is order through pain; HYDRA had taught him that. They’d never been stingy with punishment. They’d never been afraid to keep him in line. He does not deserve this sunshine feel, does not deserve the warmth of love in his heart. He knows only ice and death and pain, and he needs to be reminded of that. Though he goes by Bucky now— _again_ —he has been the Asset for too many decades to be able to shed that skin so easily. Who did he think he was, trying to get pleasure from sex?

Bucky looks up. Steve looks down. He’s chewing on his bottom lip, eyes sliding down slightly before back up to Bucky’s. Imploring. Bucky nods. His heart beats fast in his chest. He says, again, “Please, Steve.” Adds, strained, “Do it.”

Steve says, “Are you—?” and Bucky says, “ _Yes_.”

There is still a moment of hesitation. Bucky makes a quiet noise, tilts his head further back. Begs wordlessly, the way he has been taught. _Punish me._ Looks at Steve, round eyes, then slides his gaze down to Steve’s hand where he’s supporting his weight.

Steve raises it when he follows Bucky’s gaze. It’s almost like it’s in slow motion, the anticipation of it. Bucky holds his breath, closing his eyes. His skin is already buzzing, waiting for the crack of flesh-on-flesh. Electric. Yes. _Yes_. Please, just let him have it…

The slap, when it comes, doesn't have Steve’s full weight behind it, but it’s enough to snap Bucky’s head sideways anyway. He gasps. Skin blooms hot, a dull throbbing pain, and for one blissful second Bucky is okay. For one second he feels back in control. Grounded in a way he hasn't really felt since the first flash of memories coming back. Put in his place and reminded that he does not deserve the good things in this world.

Then: reality. Then: the sting of the mark on his cheek. The heavy, splitting weight of Steve inside him. His shallow, shaky breaths. The bated-breath way the room feels, the same way a hospital waiting room feels.

Then: instead of Steve it is HYDRA. Rumlow. Pierce. Rollins. Countless nameless, faceless doctors and agents and handlers that have hurt him, touched him, kept him in line with stun batons and torture. They took his name. They took his life. They took his will to live. They took everything he was and wanted to be.

Steve is not that person. He’d never be that person. Steve wouldn't hurt him, so is this really Steve here with him now? Is he back in the chair? On the table? Is this reality fake?

“Bucky?” It cuts through the fog but still sounds far away. “Buck, are you—”

“Get off.” His chest is tight and he can’t breathe, can’t get in enough air. He pushes at Steve’s chest but his arms are shaky, weak, and the room is spinning. He has a safeword, but he cannot remember it, he cannot remember anything except how a stun baton feels inside him, heavy and splitting, like he’s feeling now—and he must have failed the experiment—they keep telling him not to try to resist, that he deserves this—

“Buck—” Steve shifts and it shifts his cock inside Bucky and the world tilts and Bucky’s body seizes.

“Stop!” It comes out as a shriek, and Steve is backing off, crawling off him, and the heavy weight inside him is gone.

he draws his legs up, makes himself small. Less room for the blows, inevitable, because he’s failed again. he has disobeyed and spoke out of turn. he is not crying, even though there is salt on his cheeks. Weapons do not cry. The Asset does not cry. his shuddering breaths turn into mumbles, slurred _“Остановить”_ over and over.

“Bucky, oh Christ, Bucky, I’m so sorry—I thought—you told me—”

“Don’t hurt me.” his voice is small but neutral in the way they trained him to speak. he does not raise it. he does not show any outward emotion. he does not look across the bed towards Steve: direct eye contact now will only result in more pain. They have told him, over and over, that he needs to learn. he tugs on his hair a little; the pain grounds him. “i’m sorry. i’ll do better next time. Just don't hurt me. i’m sorry.”

“Fuck—it’s me, Bucky, it’s Steve, no one is going to hurt you.”

he wants to say that it’s too late but words are exhausting. he just wants to get the punishment out of the way, wants to get the whip or the chair or whatever it is today that they’ll use to show him his place. there is no room for failure in HYDRA, especially after everything they’ve done to create the Soldier.

_We gave you life,_ they’d say as he hung naked, manacled by his wrists to the ceiling in a HYDRA bunker, whip marks across his shoulders, burn marks everywhere else. Marks that would heal, catalogued in a file somewhere along with every broken bone, every fracture, every incision. _We gave you rebirth so that you could do great things. You should thank us for that._

And he’d say, like a good weapon, spitting blood onto the floor from biting the inside of his mouth to stay quiet, _thank you_. As they strapped him to the chair, before they put the mouthguard in so he couldn't scream anymore, he’d say _thank you for giving me life_. Whip marks oozing blood onto the leather behind him, smearing across his skin.

“Please, Bucky, just talk to me. Say something.”

he looks up. Steve’s eyes are wide, red-tinged and wet. he can hear the voices, so close, like they are in the room with him. Spoken where he lies on the floor, smelling like a half-dozen different men. _Order through pain, Soldat. Order through pain._

“ _Пожалуйста_ ,” he says. It’s easy to forget that this is not his mother tongue with the way that the sharp consonants fall from his lips with ease. “ _Я не лучше. Извините_.”

Steve swears, a string of colorful words that he hasn't heard since before the war. Memories of cold nights spent in foxholes and the frustration in Steve’s voice during missions gone wrong, shells exploding around them and the sniper rifle strung heavy across his back. How did HYDRA get ahold of these? Surely they cannot root around in his head so thoroughly…

_Now you say, thank you for using me._

_Thank you for using me._

“I’m so fucking stupid, goddamn _it,”_ Steve says, vicious. “Sam told me not to—listen to me, Bucky, you’re safe. You’re okay. HYDRA isn't here. It’s 2016 and we live together in New York. Just you and me, pal. I’m not your handler, I’m your…” He trails off, a few Gaelic words that he cannot translate— _and Steve used to do that, speak in the language his mother had taught him just to rile Bucky up, or when he was particularly sore at Bucky for something._ “Goddamn it, Bucky, I love you.”

he will not fall for this again. The illusion of Steven Grant Rogers seems real, very real, but he is _not_. They had tried that once before. He is a trick. No one will love him or has ever loved him. Weapons do not deserve love. They do not need it to run. his allegiance to HYDRA must be pledged. he must say something to avoid more pain.

The illusion of Steven Grant Rogers looks nauseous. Scared. Maybe if he does this right they will put him back in the chamber, let the cold consume him. he does not hurt there. Besides the initial freezing burn of the ice there is no pain.

he swallows. Levels his gaze with the illusion. he says the words he knows They want to hear: “ _Я готов отвечать_.”

The illusion cries.

This is new. This is advanced. he is not sure how to process this, tilts his head and stares, blank-eyed. The illusion is naked and vulnerable, but he does not seem to care. He does not seem to care about his outward display of emotion, either, which makes him weak. Very weak. An easy target. But he does not have orders. he has not been told anything yet—maybe that is the objective of this punishment?

he, too, is naked, but he learned long ago that it is not necessarily a disadvantage. his hands alone know countless ways to kill someone. Why he is naked and the illusion is naked, though, that he does not understand. 

he repeats it, the phrase, his compliance and allegiance to his handlers. he expects the illusion of the room to melt away, expects the projection of Steven Grant Rogers to melt with it, but even as he blinks they are still there. The room is still the same, unchanging. he is still the same. Confusion melts into fear, and he tries to push it down. Fear only gets him pain, snarling orders and the nodes attached to his temples, metal cuffs snapped into place over his wrists.

The illusion still cries, fat shining tears snaking wet tracks down his face. It’s saying, “Bucky.” Repeating, “Buck, c’mon, please, _please_ snap out of it. Listen to me. You’re James Buchanan Barnes. You were born on March 10, 1917. It’s 2016 and you’re with me, not HYDRA. Please. Look at me.”

_No. No, that is not true. You are the Asset. You are property of HYDRA. You have no name. No past, no future. He is lying to you._

“Buck—”

“Shut up,” he says, shaking his head. An ache builds in it, throbbing behind his eyes. It builds and builds and builds, a red crescendo of pain. None of this is true. It cannot be true. he wants this facade gone. he wants punishment, or—or—

“Buck, just look at me. I’m real. I’m here. I’m not goin’ anywhere, pal. ’Til the end of the line, remember?”

Memory returns with vivid flashes, a New York long gone and a shoulder frail under his palm. The same blue eyes in a narrower face, shadowed with pain. Those eyes, when he looks up now, mirroring that pain. _I‘m with you ’til the end of the line—_

The helicarrier, falling to ruin around them. his weaker flesh hand clenched in the front of a combat uniform, his stronger metal hand raised, fist clenched, plates whirring as he lifts it back. Cocked to kill, ready to complete his mission, the mission of Steven Grant Rogers, Captain, threat to HYDRA and the security of the world. That same face, again, blue-black with bruises and smeared red with blood. Blond hair just as blond as it was back in another time. Slitted eyes looking up at him, unafraid. Blood on his lips, blood on his teeth, blood on old words meant to break through a barrier he hadn't even known was up. _‘Cause I’m with you ’til the end of the line_ —

This pain is worse than the slap, worse than the initial flash of memories coming back. he’s dimly aware of his hands raking through his hair, covering his ears. Of drawing his knees up and hunching in on himself. Of trying to make himself as small as possible because he cannot be this person, he cannot be both of these people at once. If he is then he—

_—Sergeant James Barnes of the one oh seventh—_

— _He is lying—_

_—I waited for you—_

_—Don’t resist. Resisting will only make it hurt more. Have you forgotten that you are here for us? That you’re ours?—_

_“Bucky, come back to me. Please. I don’t know what to do, just come back—”_

_—The American breaks through and he’s screaming the name of the mission as the helicarrier crumbles around them: Steve Rogers Steve Rogers—_

“ _—Steve Rogers._ It’s me, Buck. It’s Steve.”

It’s like he is coming out of the Potomac again, dislocated shoulder shrieking, shaking water off himself like a dog. It’s like trying to claw his way to the surface with only his prosthetic to help him. Like being reborn, baptized of his sins. He fights to it, doesn't let the murky water take him, even with the added weight of an unconscious body.

The first thing he becomes aware of is trembling. After a moment, he realizes that it’s him: his flesh hand, when he moves it, shudders, his fingers jumping. An unstoppable tremor runs through him, the way he is when he’s just come out of cryofreeze.

The second thing is that he’s still naked. Steve is, too. There are tear tracks down Steve’s cheeks, and when Bucky brings his trembling hand to his own face he finds them there as well.

“Steve?” he croaks. Then: “Are you real?”

A terrible mixture of grief, anger, and despair clouds Steve’s face. He struggles for a moment before he says, “Yeah, I’m—I’m real, Buck. I’m right here. I promise.”

Bucky almost sobs in relief. They had done that one time, when it first started. The mind is a funny thing under duress. Then they had showed him the papers after the crash of the _Valkyrie_. That sort of grief, the kind that drops out the bottom from your stomach, leaving you hollow in ways you didn't know people could get hollow, is something Bucky won’t ever forget.

“I’m sorry,” he says, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn't have asked you to do that. I didn’t—I didn't know that would happen.”

“Hey, no.” The bed shifts as Steve scoots closer; his hand on Bucky’s chin has Bucky slowly lifting his head. “This isn't your fault, Buck. None of it.”

“I asked you to hit me.”

Steve, to his credit, only slightly winces. “You were in distress.”

“I still shouldn't have done it.”

“Why didn't you safeword, then? Before you asked me to…”

_Hit me. Hurt me._ Bucky shrugs. He doesn't want to tell Steve how he couldn't remember the safeword. He knows he should. “Maybe I’m not ready,” he says instead, and shame wells up inside him at the admission. Not ready for something as simple as sex. Something that he and Steve had been doing long before the war.

He’d told them the minimum of what HYDRA had done, all of the things that hadn't made it into the files. Had to sit there, sick with himself, while Steve left the room after Bucky recounted all of the ways HYDRA had used him. Had to pretend, when Steve came back smelling strongly like breath mints and faintly like vomit, that HYDRA hadn’t done much worse than just making him the local stress reliever for its agents.

And maybe he should have. Maybe if he had he wouldn't be here right now, weak and reeling from one of the worst flashbacks he’s had since settling back in New York. Maybe Steve needs to know everything. But maybe he doesn’t. Because Bucky doesn't think that he could stand the look on Steve’s face if he found out that he would beg for it.

“I just want to be normal again,” he begins to say. “You got no idea how bad I want that. And the fact that I can’t even do something as simple as have sex with my fella just…” Bucky breaks off, clenches his flesh hand into a fist. Immediately Steve covers it with his own hand.

“I get it,” says Steve. Bucky stares down at Steve’s broad hand over his own. The paleness of his skin covers the bony mountain ridges of Bucky’s knuckles like snow. “I do. I want to be normal just as bad as you do, Buck. But the simple fact is we ain’t anymore, and we won’t ever be again. All we can do is work with all we got, and I’d say that what we got, you and me, that’s more than enough.”

“You know I’m broken, Steve.” Bucky doesn't look up.

“That hasn't stopped me.”

“I could kill you.”

Steve puts his hand under Bucky’s chin and forces him to look up. His eyes are steel. Bucky is reminded of Brooklyn and the war with the look in those eyes. “I’d rather go out like that than fighting some stupid heroic battle,” Steve says. “It’s always gonna begin and end with us, Bucky. You know that. It’s in the stars. It’s in _us_.”

Bucky wraps his left hand around Steve’s wrist. If those fingers could tremble, he knows, they would be. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” Steve’s voice is firm, but there are the faint shine of tears in his eyes now. “Deflect all you want, but you gotta know by now that you’re stuck with me.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Been stuck with you for nearly a century, punk.”

Steve laughs, though it’s brief. “Remember how we used to talk about getting older?”

Bucky does. Getting older for them meant somehow surviving poverty and Steve’s illnesses. “You mean making it to the ripe old age of thirty—thirty-five, if we somehow got lucky?” He doesn’t talk about how Steve would’ve been lucky to make it to twenty-five. Back then he hadn’t let himself think about it, either. Life didn't seem like living if Steve wasn’t there with him.

Steve scoots closer, slow enough to give Bucky time to back away if he wanted to, and slides his hand into Bucky’s hair. He tilts his head down to catch Bucky’s eyes, giving him a small, crooked smile when he does. “And here we are.”

They don't say anything, just look, Bucky’s eyes searching Steve’s face. Somehow, impossibly, this moment is even more intimate than the cool air from the fan blowing on their naked skin. Steve’s always had this intensity in his eyes; _like being searched all the way down to your soul_ , Bucky used to say. _Artist’s eyes_ , Sarah Rogers would say. _An old soul’s eyes._

“You don’t need to tell me,” Steve says eventually, though the tight way it comes out means otherwise, “but at least tell your therapist. Sam, even. We want to help you. You don’t need to do this alone, Buck. You’ve got the best support system in the world.”

“I want to tell you. I do. But they—they did things, Steve. A lot more than what I told you.”

A little tic goes through Steve’s jaw and he pulls away slightly. Bucky has to remind himself that the anger is directed at HYDRA, not him, though that little complacent part of him, the one taught to shirk from anger, drop to his knees and obey, will always be present.

“But,” Bucky says, and it takes everything in him not to cow in submission, “I want to try again. Having sex with you.”

The way Steve kisses him, then, swooping in and holding him close, one hand still in Bucky’s hair and the other curved around his side, has Bucky taking pause. Steve doesn't treat him careful and efficiently, like a weapon. He treats him like a lover, a best friend, a partner. Something Bucky hasn't quite remembered how to be.

Steve must sense Bucky’s hesitation, because he starts to pull back, but Bucky stops him with his metal hand on the back of Steve’s head, careful and cautious. Testing. He pulls Steve back in and opens his mouth, coaxing Steve’s tongue against his. He says _I love you_ in every way that he can; this is one want that still gets caught in his throat.

They pull back with a slick sound, Steve nudging Bucky’s nose with his before resting their foreheads together. “We can take as long as you need,” he says. “If you tell me or don’t tell me—that’s up to you.”

He will, Bucky thinks. Eventually. He doesn’t know what to say, so all he says is, “Thank you.” And Steve, he says, “I love you,” without expecting anything in return.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr [is here](http://endofadream.tumblr.com). feedback is always appreciated!


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